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Subject:Re: PDF for Online documents From:Dave Chisma & Gail Hodgson <chisma -at- C031 -dot- AONE -dot- NET -dot- AU> Date:Wed, 17 Sep 1997 19:47:59 +1000
Stephen Forrest wrote:
>
> There's something I don't understand. Perhaps someone can help me out, here.
> I finally broke down and downloaded the Acrobat Reader, because there were
> some documents I wanted that were in PDF format. I've put off getting
> familiar with PDF because I never needed it and there were too many other
> things to do. However, it's kind of an important technology, so I was
> excited I was gonna find out what all the fuss is about -- until I saw my
> first PDF document. It's terrible! It's almost unusable. This is a document
> from a source that should be able to produce a fully professional-looking
> PDF, and would have an incentive to do so. I have good equipment, running
> full-screen, so how come it looks so bad? That can't be normal. Am I doing
> something wrong?
>
You're probably right: something is wrong. If a PDF document looks that
bad, I suspect there are some bad font substitutions taking place (best
to use Type 1 fonts in the original doc), and perhaps some bad choices
of graphics compression. I can make a really bad PDF doc if I try hard
enough, but generally they come out exactly like the original and very
sharp, even when magnified.
It also depends on whether the PDF was created using Acrobat PDF Writer
or Acrobat Distiller. Generally, Distiller works better (especially for
docs with lots of graphics), but I've run across some True Type fonts
that Distiller mangles while PDF writer recognises.
Cheers,
Dave Chisma
chisma -at- c031 -dot- aone -dot- net -dot- au
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